Vanishing England eBook

one day, the village publican wanting the posts for
his pig-sty. County councils sweep away old bridges
because they are inconveniently narrow and steep for
the tourists’ motors, and deans and chapters
are not always to be relied upon in regard to their
theories of restoration, and squire and parson work
sad havoc on the fabrics of old churches when they
are doing their best to repair them. Too often
they have decided to entirely demolish the old building,
the most characteristic feature of the English landscape,
with its square grey tower or shapely spire, a tower
that is, perhaps, loopholed and battlemented, and
tells of turbulent times when it afforded a secure
asylum and stronghold when hostile bands were roving
the countryside. Within, piscina, ambrey, and
rood-loft tell of the ritual of former days.
Some monuments of knights and dames proclaim the achievements
of some great local family. But all this weighs
for nothing in the eyes of the renovating squire and
parson. They must have a grand, new, modern church
with much architectural pretension and fine decorations
which can never have the charm which attaches to the
old building. It has no memories, this new structure.
It has nothing to connect it with the historic past.
Besides, they decree that it must not cost too much.
The scheme of decoration is stereotyped, the construction
mechanical. There is an entire absence of true
feeling and of any real inspiration of devotional
art. The design is conventional, the pattern
uniform. The work is often scamped and hurried,
very different from the old method of building.
We note the contrast. The medieval builders were
never in a hurry to finish their work. The old
fanes took centuries to build; each generation doing
its share, chancel or nave, aisle or window, each
trying to make the church as perfect as the art of
man could achieve. We shall see how much of this
sound and laborious work has vanished, a prey to restoration
and ignorant renovation. We shall see the house-breaker
at work in rural hamlet and in country town.
Vanishing London we shall leave severely alone.
Its story has been already told in a large and comely
volume by my friend Mr. Philip Norman. Besides,
is there anything that has not vanished, having been
doomed to destruction by the march of progress, now
that Crosby Hall has gone the way of life in the Great
City? A few old halls of the City companies remain,
but most of them have given way to modern palaces;
a few City churches, very few, that escaped the Great
Fire, and every now and again we hear threatenings
against the masterpieces of Wren, and another City
church has followed in the wake of all the other London
buildings on which the destroyer has laid his hand.
The site is so valuable; the modern world of business
presses out the life of these fine old edifices.
They have to make way for new-fangled erections built
in the modern French style with sprawling gigantic
figures with bare limbs hanging on the porticoes which
seem to wonder how they ever got there, and however
they were to keep themselves from falling. London
is hopeless! We can but delve its soil when opportunities
occur in order to find traces of Roman or medieval
life. Churches, inns, halls, mansions, palaces,
exchanges have vanished, or are quickly vanishing,
and we cast off the dust of London streets from our
feet and seek more hopeful places.